GRAND RAPIDS, MI – Steve Ford and his successor as chairman of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation were at the downtown museum Thursday, June 19, to announce a $15 million remodeling and expansion.

Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum remodelingExhibits at Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum will be remodeled as part of a $15 million project that also will build an 8,000-square-foot expansion to the museum and digitize thousands of documents from the Ford presidency.

Click here to check out the plans, which include an 8,000-square-foot classroom addition to the south end of the building at 303 Pearl St. NW. Construction is slated for completion in 2016.

As for how the remodeling will change museum exhibits, here are three examples described by Elaine Didier, director of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum:

View full sizeThe current U.S.S. Monterey exhibit at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum currently includes a model of the ship, pictures and an old uniform.

• Ford’s experience on the U.S.S. Monterey during a 1944 typhoon in the Pacific Ocean

“President Ford slid across the deck, was blown across, and just saved his life by catching the edge and swinging down to a catwalk, so we might not have had a President Ford had he not (done) that. So basically we’re going to try to recreate the sound and light, the fury of the hurricane and that’s one thing with technology that we can make much more real.”

View full sizeThe museum currently displays several letters written to President Ford after he pardoned former President Nixon. A remodeled exhibit will include a touch screen with hundreds of letters about the pardoning.

• Ford's pardoning of former President Richard Nixon

“Overall, one of the things that will be hugely different is the interactivity. What you see now are static photos. These walls are covered. There are lots of plaques to read. We’ll be doing a lot more with interactive software kiosks.

“You can see here eight or 10 letters (about Ford’s pardoning of Nixon) on display. We have 273,000 letters – about 60 percent negative and 40 percent positive – and what we can do now is scan these and we can have a flip book so you can stand here and look at a screen, and it goes to what people call an individual-curated experience. You might look at different letters than I might look at.”

View full sizeMuseum visitors won't be able to sit at the desk in the Oval Office because President Ford "felt very strongly that that was sort of a sacred place," said Elaine Didier, museum director. But a remodeled exhibit will let visitors view the room through windows behind the desk.

• Ford's Oval Office

“We’re going to take that center window so you can stand behind it and view in so you feel that you are in the Oval Office. There will be mini screens and iPads so that you can scan the room and if you looked at, say, a vase or a dish on that shelf, it would tell you the story of that dish. The whole thing will come alive. You’ll get the history of where did that plate come from. It’s not just Disney World (re-creation of artifacts). This is the real stuff.”